If only she’d call me Mister again
If only my genitals didn’t float
When I relaxed in the bath
And we both looked down and we both agreed
It’s stupid to be a man
Don’t tell my mother I’ve become
The appendix of a full-grown woman
I’m made of her I’m useless to her
I’m something gouged out with her beauty
I’m the shape of her perfume
I’m the chime of wire hangers
That she took her clothes down from
When I made her strong and angry
With the subtlest insults I could devise
And still she would not fall
And I knew for certain
She was the Magnum Opus of my middle-age
The twenty-third verse of the third chapter of Pirke Aboth (Sayings of the Fathers), a short tractate of the Mishmah:
Rabbi Eleazar Hisma said: Offerings of birds and purifications of women, these, yea these, are the essential precepts. Astronomy and geometry are but the fringes of wisdom.
“What are here translated ‘offerings of birds’ and ‘purifications of women,’ refer to the offerings brought by women after childbirth and for reasons arising out of the monthly periods. To explain them fully would need a minute knowledge of halachah and is not necessary for the present purpose. The point is that they are declared to be the very essence of the Torah.”
(R. Travers Herford’s Commentary)
Go beyond his clumsy confession to the infuriating presumptions of the Rabbi. The function of birth or appearing is the proper concern for the creatures on the crust of this star. We have all appeared here together. Creation and menstruation, birth and the birth from which nothing appears, these are the awesome limits of our existence here. Also, nothing happens when you fuck yourself.
When will we collaborate again, men and women, to establish a measure for our mighty and different energies? When will we speak frankly again about our insane and homicidal appetites? We are each other’s Mystery. This Mystery will not yield to violence or dissection. Please don’t start singing.
Lost in the floodtides of fashion
O please bring her back to the captain
Who steers by the star of her wisdom
Forever above and beyond him
When Jerusalem has been dissolved the Temple will arise in every heart where men will study the art of naming and women will focus the powers of life and death, all in the great clarity of understanding that the Lord is One. This is the disgusting thrust of a Sunday School mind.